In my previous article, I discussed three reasons why hiring a professional book indexer may be a good idea for many scholarly authors. Later, it occurred to me that knowing you want to hire an indexer is just the beginning of the journey. Knowing where to find one can prove to be a challenge.

Indexers, Locating

Finding an excellent, qualified professional indexer is actually quite easy—if you know where to look. In this article I’ll be focusing on a couple of great resources for locating an indexer in the United States, but I’ll also provide some pointers for other countries at the end.

Like the ASI, the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) also offers a member directory, which can be searched by keyword, by name, by state (as in the indexer’s location, not condition), by skill, by specialty, by hardware, or by software—although in this case, for our narrow purpose of finding a professional indexer, the skills, hardware, and software search options may not really be all that helpful. Once again, I invite you to have a look at my profile as an example.

Indexing Societies Elsewhere

Other countries, of course, have their own professional indexing societies, associations, and networks, a few of which I'll list below, in no particular order:

As you can see, if you know where to look, finding a professional indexer isn’t difficult. Now all you have to do is choose from the plethora of my colleagues—which may not be quite as easy as finding them.